Wife of Palestinian Radical Arrested Israeli forces detained the wife of a Palestinian radical who is in prison for his alleged role in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister, relatives said Thursday.

Israeli government officials refused to comment. A Palestinian human rights group and relatives of Ablah Saadat, 47, said she was arrested as she tried to cross from the West Bank to Jordan, from where she planned fly to Brazil to attend a conference on political prisoners.

Her husband, Ahmed Saadat, is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction whose gunmen assassinated ultra-nationalist Cabinet Minister Rehavam Zeevi, 75, at a Jerusalem hotel on Oct. 17, 2001.

The group said it was avenging its former leader, Mustafa Zibri, who killed in a targeted Israeli rocket attack two months before the Zeevi assassination.

Ahmed Saadat and four others accused of involvement in Zeevi's killing are being held in a Palestinian jail in Jericho, under American and British supervision, as part of a deal that helped end Israel's 34-day siege of Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters last spring. Saadat has not been put on trial. The four others were convicted by a makeshift Palestinian court of killing Zeevi.

Ablah Saadat, a mother of four, has no ties to her husband's group, said her mother-in-law, Fathiyah Saadat. She left for the Allenby Bridge crossing over the Jordan River early Tuesday on her way to catch a flight to Brazil, where she was to speak about her husband's imprisonment at a conference on political prisoners.

Her mother-in-law said she received a phone call from her saying she had been detained at the border by Israeli intelligence officers. She hasn't heard from her since then.

Khalida Jarrar, of the Palestinian prisoners rights group Addameer, said Israeli officials told her that Saadat was being held at the Beit El military base near Ramallah.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html